Examines the understanding of the pragmatic function of mental terms ("think,""know,""guess") to express the relative certainty of 69 children aged 3-11. Results showed an improvement with age for the "know-think" and "know-guess" contrasts, but no improvement with age for the…

An experiment is reported in which connective recall, as well as noun recall, was obtained in a pair-associate learning, syntactic facilitation paradigm. Results were interpreted as consistent with the hypothesis that experimenter-supplied verb links facilitate noun pair learning by serving an instructional role, indicating to the subject how a…

Students--516 male and 475 female 11th and 12th graders in Ottawa (Canada)--completed academic self-concept scales from three different instruments to test the Marsh-Shavelson model that accounts for the separation of math and verbal self-concepts. The two self-concepts are separable and should be considered so in future research. (TJH)

THE LEARNING OF VERBALLY CONDITIONED MATERIAL WAS STUDIED TO CLARIFY SOME OF THE CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH SUCH LEARNING IS ACCOMPANIED BY THE USE OF HIGHER MENTAL PROCESSES, AND THE CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH IT IS NOT. THE STARTING POINT FOR THIS RESEARCH WAS THE PREMISE THAT LEARNING IN VERBAL CONDITIONING CAN OCCUR EITHER WITH OR WITHOUT AWARENESS ON…

This study describes the vocal development of infants born with very low birth weights (VLBW). Samples of vocalizations were recorded from three groups of infants when they were 8, 12 and 18 months of age: preterm VLBW infants with bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), preterm VLBW infants without BPD, and healthy full-term infants. Infants with BPD…

Mothers' utterances were measured during interactions with their 13-month-old infants and correlated with measures of infants' productive lexical development at 13 and 24 months. Correlations between maternal measures and infants' lexical development were lower for employed mothers than for mothers who were full-time caregivers. (BC)

This paper discusses how the role of instructors changes as young learners advance along a mastery continuum, or a process of transition from an initial novice to an eventual expert status in the learning of a skill. Four stages along this continuum are: (1) acquisition, in which the learner does not know the task; (2) early consolidation, in…

The University of Victoria and the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs sponsored a 4-week prekindergarten, preschool, and orientation program for Indian children living on 4 reserves in the southern region of Vancouver Island. The 3 groups of children served were 4- and 5-year-olds (prekindergarten), 5- and 6-year-olds (preschool), and 7-…

This longitudinal research examines the development of literacy skills in the context of an educational microcomputer implementation conducted to evaluate word processors and LOGO as tools for cognitive enrichment. Three classes including 87 children in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada are being followed from first- through third-grade. One…

Age differences in recognition and recall of common nouns were studied using three groups of fifty students, with mean ages of 6.7, 11.4, and 16.9. Subjects were randomly placed in either an incidental or intentional learning condition. All subjects were questioned about the physical, phonemic, and semantic aspects of the same words, in the same…

This study of the relation of variables of home environment to differences in children's cognitive development used a sample of 25 pairs of grade five boys in the 10-12 age range matched for general intelligence but discrepant with respect to verbal ability. Home environmental measures were obtained by means of a 70 minute interview with the…

An examination of the effectiveness of English-Ukrainian partial immersion programs in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba looks at research already done in five areas: student achievement in English language skills, Ukrainian language skills, academic subjects other than English or Ukrainian, students' cognitive development, and students' social…